Thursday, April 24, 2008

Good Stuff

1. Hey Brazil! Wanna be our personal gas station? Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude.

2. Our trade pact with Colombia, Nic Kristof gets it! Some Democrats point out that Colombia’s government has been tied to paramilitary units that kill union members. It was important for Democrats to raise these concerns — forcing the Colombian government to crack down on paramilitaries and prosecute those who murder unionists. But Colombia’s progress has been immense. Assassinations of union members, while still a problem, have fallen 80 percent since 2002. Last year, the murder rate for union members was 4 per 100,000, reaching levels far below the homicide rate for the general public. As she clips flowers in a vast greenhouse, Ms. Reynosa knows that her future depends on access to the American market. She agrees that Colombia has human-rights problems, but she argues passionately that the free-trade agreement is the way to register continued improvements. More trade will mean more jobs and more security and human rights, she argues.

3. Roger Simon lays out Hillary's path to the nomination. A random excerpt: And then, of course, bribe the superdelegates.

2 comments:

Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude.

I think that the article makes a bit too much about where specifically Western Hemisphere oil comes from. Given the fungability of oil, I'd have to think that it's the entire world's proportion of oil that comes from the Middle East that measures reliance on Middle Eastern oil.